HUMAN RIGHTS Reforming Development Finance Over more than two decades, CIEL has learned that the best way to protect human rights and the environment from destructive development projects is to follow the funding and tackle it at its source. As international financial institutions proliferate, we work to ensure that safeguards and accountability mechanisms are built in and strengthened, so that communities can hold these banks accountable.
ACCELERATING THE TRANSITION FROM FOSSIL FUELS The pace of climate change is accelerating far faster than the pace of global climate talks, and we must find new ways to accelerate action on this threat. While coal consumption in the United States has declined gradually over the past 10 years, US coal exports have risen. And the US Export-Import Bank, a federal agency that has been funneling billions of US tax dollars into dirty energy projects abroad, has been one of the biggest lenders, raising its financial backing of coal exports from $2 billion to more than $10 billion. In July, CIEL joined five other national and local environmental groups in filing a suit against the US Export-Import Bank (ExIm). The group challenged a $90 million loan guarantee ExIm provided to Xcoal Energy & Resources to export Appalachian coal from ports in Maryland and Virginia to Asia. Despite well-documented environmental harms associated with coal transport and the likelihood of local impacts of coal use by importing countries, ExIm approved the loan guarantee without conducting an environmental impact assessment. The array of air, water, safety, health, biodiversity, and other impacts on local communities and ecosystems—which face a chain reaction of increased mining, rail traffic, and port activity—remains woefully unaddressed by state and federal regulators. When President Obama announced his Climate Action Plan in June, he made a clear commitment to limit support for new coal plants as a means to address climate change, but he failed to address the need to phase out public financing for coal exports. The pending lawsuit against ExIm Bank further highlights this major policy gap in the President’s plans. Continued US financing of dirty coal deals violates the United States’ obligations and commitments to lead the international community in the fight against climate change. 8
CIEL Annual Report 2013